Proto-Gigxkpoyan
History The Proto-Gigxkpoyan language, the common ancestral to all Gigxpoyan languages, is agreed to have been a spoken as a single language between 11 and 10 thousand years B.K. by tribes of nomadic fisherman. Phonology Much of the phonetic inventory of Proto-Gigxpoyan is still disputed, but it is agreed that it had 31 consonantal phonemes and 9 vowel phonemes. The coronal POA's contrast is debated, it is not known whether it was a contrast between alveolar and retroflex POA's or between dental and alveolar POA's. The exact qualities of the three plosive series are also disputed, it may have been a voicing or aspiration contrast. The exact nature of *a is not know, it may have been front, back or central. Morphology Nouns Case Proto-Gigxkpoyan had some prepositions, that seem to have marked case. It disputed whether they were separate words or not. The Nominative was zero marked. Those Prepositions applied to entire Noun Phrases as opposed to just the noun. There was a considerable amount of locative/lative prepositions/cases. Number Nouns are believed to have been indefinite by default and quantification was made through quantifiers, there were different quantifiers for objects of different shapes. The plain numbers, used for counting, were: The quantifiers are mostly derived from those numbers, though they are not completely transparent. It is speculated that in stages anterior to Proto-Gigxpoyan proper those where more transparent. The 'Many' column referred to a large unspecified quantity and was probably used mainly to enphasise quantity. Verbs All verbs stems are believed to have ended in *Vɥ and when conjugating them the *ɥ was always substituted if there are suffixes (and there always is) Aspect Proto-Gigxkpoyan is an aspect heavy language, having only one tense marker, all the rest being aspectual distinctions. The aspectual markers and the future marker are treated the same. The reconstruction listens Aspect Markers as follows Those normally substituted the stem's final ɥ. There is evidence the Future Marker may have been used also as an Irrealis Marker Voice There were too voices additional to the unmarked active voice in Proto-Gigxkpoyan, a Passive Voice, marked with *-ɥɔɥ and a Causative Voice marked by *-t'aɥ those come after the verb stem, but before the Aspectual Marking. When applying aspect to those forms their final ɥ is dropped. Because of that, and because these forms probably could be used as Imperatives, these may also be analyzed as derivational processes. Subordinators There are a bunch of morphemes that seem to have rendered the verbs be subordinate, and are thus called Subordinators. Those had multiple functions and many are only applied to specific verb forms Based on the semantic differences in the daughter languages, it can be reconstructed that the difference between the Counterfactual and Conditional was a contrast between a hypothetical condition and a purely implicational condition. To Exemplify: Counterfactual: If i where king i'd be rich and famous Conditional: If (or when) water gets hot, it boils. Infinitives and Imperatives The Verb without any Aspect Marking or Subordinators could be used as an Imperative or as a clausal argument (i.e. Infinitive). It seems that *miɥ could not receive the Relativizer Subordinator. Adjectives and Adverbs Adjectives did not display any agreement nor verbal morphology. Most nouns could operate as adjectives and vice-versa, but many words operated almost solely as adjectives The adjectives have a Restrictive(unmarked) and an Attributive form. The Attributive (marked by the morpheme *-k'nu) was also used adverbially. This distinction is only made when the adjectives are used for attribuitively. Syntax Noun Phrase The noun phrase ordering is believed to have been Verb Phrase The normal word order was VSO. Adverbs may come directly after the verb. The exception is that relative clauses have SVO word order Questions Questions seem to have been formed only by entonation patterns, without any morphosyntactical alteration of the clause. Derivational Morphology Noun Forming There were several strategies of noun formation from verbs. As the border between nouns and adjectives wasn't very clear, clear patterns of derivation from adjectives to nouns could not be reconstructed. Verb to Noun There were three main processes of nominalization from verbs: Event Nominalizations Event denoting nominalizations (e.g. The flying of the birds) were forming by either reduplicating the bare root: *fnufnu jit kik coming GEN 1PS My coming Another pattern of nominalization is what is described above as an infinitive. *fnuy jit kik to.come GEN 1PS My coming The mainstream consensus is that they were in free variation. There is also evidence that points to the fact that certain dialects may have used a bare verb stem as an infinitive *fnu jit kik to.come GEN 1PS My coming Agent and Patient Nominalizations Nominalizations that denoted Agent and Patient nouns (the eater, the eaten), seem to be less regular, and, in general, innovations of each branch. As such, several patterns can be reconstructed: The morpheme *-rrarr, that denoted agent nouns *kpórrarr Speaker It is also proposed that this morpheme could combine with the passive voice to generate patient noun, but most of the forms used to support this theory are scarce and not strictly regular outcomes. **mnojórrarr Prey (Lit: the hunted) Another morpheme, *-xṯ is reconstructed as having been used to form agent nouns by at least one Proto-Gigxkpoyan dialect. *kpóxṯ Speaker The morpheme *-jut is another possible patient forming morphology *mnojut Prey (Lit: the hunted) Abstractions With the exception of some divergent dialects, these are mostly regular, formed with the prefix *pyx-''. Note, however, that while the phonological form was mostly regular, they formed abstractions, and are as such object to great semantic diversification. Some examples: ''*pixmij Life, deity, comfort, welfare, oneself *pixkpoj language, mouth, word, phrase, order, command *pixrroy food, wife, grip, possession As one can see, the semantic variation is quite wild in the different branches Noun to Noun Adjective Forming Verb Forming Category:Gigxkpoyan languages Category:Proto-languages Lexicon Category:Gigxkpoyan languages Category:Proto-languages